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Taming The HULK In Us. Managing Anger.

Imagine calmly driving your way through a busy highway. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a car wrongly overtakes you with a speed of a supersonic jet, leaving you breathless and baffled. Your heart starts drumming in erratic beat, palms start to sweat, face becomes red and then unfriendly words start spilling from your mouth. That, my friend, was ANGER. Have you noticed how physiological signs like sweating, increased heart rate came first followed by the anger verbal outburst?

Anger is in you, me, in the guy next door. It’s how we CHOOSE to express it makes different impact on our wellbeing, physical health and relationships. So following is the list of what NOT to do, when you are angry.
1. Don’t drive:
Whoa! Driving is an activity that requires full mental concentration and if one’s mind is preoccupied with anger, one tends to be more rash and impulsive on road, which would not end well. Research shows that angry drivers take more risks and have more accidents.

2. “Never go to bed angry’’.
Don’t call it a day when one would still have pent up rage in regarding the issue. Journal of Neuroscience, found that sleep enhances emotional memories and would in turn reinforce the anger. So you are more likely to remember that heated argument better, if you went to sleep with it on your mind.

3. Eating might not be a very good idea:
We don’t tend to make healthy food choices when we are angry. Moreover , a heightened state of emotions sparks the fight or flight response, where the body thinks it’s in danger. In such a state, digestion takes a backseat to the “emergency” at hand and the food doesn’t get digested properly.

4. Take a Timeout:
Being in that argumentative conversation would likely to make us say things that we would regret later. So take a timeout with an intention of coming back to discuss rather than confront. Take few deep breaths. The timeout would calm our mind and body and would enable us to make rational decisions rather than emotional.

5. Avoid posting your anger on face book:
Broadcasting and telling the world that we are angry has its repercussions because posting something on the internet is hard to take back.

6. Avoid taking the thinking train:
The more one thinks, the more one gets caught in a tangled web of justifications and explanations. Obsessively thinking about ways the other person harmed you or was unfair to you—known as rumination—does not resolve anything. Over thinking tends to frustrate you even more.

7. Stay away from Alcohol:
Well, most of us have seen what happens to the angry hero when he gets drunk. Either he gets beaten to a pulp or says something that he later regrets. Same with the real life. Alcohol aggravates the negative emotions and impairs judgment and logical reasoning.

Anger happens. It is as important part of our lives as being happy. But it’s very important for our physical and mental health that we modulate the intensity of our anger.